UA nursing, pharmacy colleges rank among nation's best

By Joseph Altman Jr.

Arizona Daily Wildcat

Two colleges in the UA Health Sciences Center have been ranked among the top 10 schools of their kind in two national studies.

The University of Arizona College of Nursing ranked as the nation's sixth-best nursing school and the College of Pharmacy ranked third in the nation in terms of extramural funding per state-funded full-time faculty member. Extramural funding is funding that is not provided by the state.

The College of Nursing received its sixth-place rating in a recent survey published in the January/February edition of Nurse Educator.

Questionnaires were given to a random sample of 200 deans from the nation's 491 accredited nursing schools. Two hundred randomly selected researchers from the membership list of the American Nurses Association's Council of Nurse Researchers were also asked to participate.

The respondents ranked their choices for the top ten nursing programs in the country.

The study is a follow-up to a 1984 study which ranked the UA College of Nursing 17th, and a 1988 study, when the nursing school received a seventh-place ranking.

The College of Pharmacy's third-place position was ranked by the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy based on the amount of extramural funding received in 1993-94.

Although the rating does not rank the college's quality directly, J. Lyle Bootman, dean of the College of Pharmacy, said "This illustrates the excellence of the College of Pharmacy, which excels in teaching and the advancement of pharmaceutical sciences."

The UA College of Pharmacy had $10.5 million in extramural funding in 1993-94. The University of California at San Francisco and the University of Utah filled the top two positions.

The rankings will aid the schools' money requests to support enrollment increases from the Arizona Legislature, said James Dalen, vice provost for health sciences.

"One of our top priorities is to expand enrollment at the two colleges so that we can educate much-needed nurses and pharmacists for our state," Dalen said. "Currently, we must turn away well-qualified Arizona students who want to enroll in either of these colleges."

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